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Our Silver Wedding 'thing'

Posted March 31, 2014

It’s our Silver Wedding Anniversary next month and we (actually, it’s more I than we) have planned the perfect celebration. Retracing the steps of our French honeymoon.

I’ve booked the same chateaux in the Loire valley. They look as elegant and sumptuous today as they did then and I can’t wait to experience their fairytale charm all over again. If only my husband was as enthusiastic as I am …

“Has it really been twenty-five years?,” he asks.I tell him it’s closer to thirty as we lived together for six years before we married. He looks like a drowning man watching his life flash in front of him.

After weeks of exasperated reminders from me he finally gets round to checking his work diary. He realises that the date of the trip clashes with an important deadline. It will have to be pushed back (the anniversary trip that is, not his work commitment). I’m gutted.

He’s baffled. What does it matter if we can’t celebrate our Silver Wedding Anniversary on the actual day? As long as we get round to doing it at some point. He senses I'm not happy; he becomes defensive. "What's with the look?" he asks. "You'd think I'd just chopped the head off your pet rabbit." He may as well have.

Just as I’m about to book the flights and car rental, he tells me he wants to travel by Eurotunnel this time. I mention that it is a six hour drive from Calais to the Loire valley. I don’t want to sit beside him for that length of time, trying to navigate our way - a sure recipe for disaster.

He is adamant that it won’t take him that long to get there. And if it makes me feel any better (it doesn’t!) he’ll sort out a French satnav. Alarm bells start clanging in my head. The last time we relied on a satnav device abroad was in Iceland. What should have been a scenic drive to the Westfjords turned into ten gruelling hours.

Last night I hunted out our honeymoon photographs. Wouldn’t it be fun if we recreated the pictures? We could track down similar outfits (maybe - ahem - a size bigger?), pose in the same settings and … He tells me not to be ridiculous. He’s got a point. Who makes shoulder pads that big these days?

This morning my husband texts me from the train on his way to work - he’s researching the area. At last the man is showing some interest! He has discovered “La Loire à Vélo”, a cycling path which stretches for 600 km alongside the Loire River. Why don’t we strap our bikes on to the roof of the car and turn this whole anniversary ‘thing’ into an adventure? Sorry, did he just call our Silver Wedding celebration a thing?

As for turning our second honeymoon into a cycling adventure? Surely it doesn’t take twenty-five years of marriage to work out my response to that!